Andrei Zhdanov

Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov (26 February 1896-31 August 1948) was Second Secretary of the CPSU from 21 March 1939 to 31 August 1948, succeeding Lazar Kaganovich and preceding Georgy Malenkov.

Biography
Andrei Zhdanov was born in Mariupol, Russian Empire on 26 February 1896. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and became an active propagandist for the party until the 1917 October Revolution. He became a political officer in the Red Army, and in 1924 he was responsible for the CPSU in Tver and Nizhny Novgorod. In 1934, he succeeded Sergei Kirov as chairman of the Leningrad Communist Party, and was regarded as a likely successor to Joseph Stalin. In that year, he also became a secretary of the CPSU's Central Committee, and in 1939 joined the Politburo. He took an active part in Stalin's Great Purge, as well as the ruthless imposition of Soviet rule in the Baltics from 1940 to 1941. He took a decisive part in the organization of the defense of Leningrad during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941-1944. He is best remembered for hsi cultural and ideological influence, however. He instigated a major education reform in the USSR from 1934 to 1938, and in 1944 he became responsible for party ideology. He enforced socialist realism in the arts and a Bolshevik historiography. His vicious opposition to any Western, "decadent" cultural influence led to his country's complete artistic isolation. In 1947, he became co-founder and leader of Cominform, and he died of alcoholism in 1948; Stalin blamed his death on Kremlin doctors and "Zionist" conspirators.